Jan 26

Symantec advises customers to stop using pcAnywhere

Due to some recently dis­cov­ered vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties Syman­tec is advis­ing cus­tomers to stop using pcAnywhere, the soft­ware that allows remote con­trol of your PC from the Internet.

But seri­ously, folks. If you can access your PC remotely, it’s just that much more likely some­one else can, too. If you really care about secu­rity, this isn’t some­thing you should be doing regard­less the soft­ware involved.

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Jan 25

Google’s new privacy policy

On top of forc­ing every­one with a Google account to have a Google+ account, Google has just announced a new pri­vacy pol­icy that will track con­sumers’ online activ­i­ties across Google prod­ucts. And if you don’t like, too bad because you can’t opt out.

As bad as this is, it’s hardly unique. Face­book and other sites do basi­cally the same thing. Luck­ily, the Wall Street Jour­nal’s What They Know page lets you find out what your favorite site knows about you.

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Jan 24

RIP Norman Edmund

If you grew up in the 60s and 70s you might remem­ber Edmund Sci­en­tific and their won­der­ful cat­a­logs full of optics, tele­scope parts and more. The founder, Nor­man Edmund, passed away Jan­u­ary 17th at the age of 96.

Edmund’s focus has changed since I was a kid. The com­pany split into two, with Edmund Sci­en­tific being sold to another com­pany and the remain­der focus­ing on indus­trial optics. Edmund Sci­en­tific is still doing busi­ness as Edmund Sci­en­tifics and sell­ing many of the same things that made them famous.

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Jan 24

Mitt’s Tax Returns

What’s wrong with Mitt Romney’s tax returns isn’t the returns them­selves, it’s the tax code that allows him to pay so lit­tle in taxes.

Look at it this way. He made almost 400 times as much as I did last year yet his tax rate is about one-third of mine. How is that even pos­si­ble? I ask rhetor­i­cally, because it’s not only pos­si­ble but per­fectly legal. This, then, is what is wrong with Amer­ica and until it’s changed we’re doomed to watch the num­ber of “have nots” grow and grow.

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